


it's my own design

by rillrill



Series: twilight of the mortals [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Desk Sex, F/M, Moral Ambiguity, Office Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 05:41:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2013114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If that makes him greedy, so be it. He’s never going to be honorable. He may as well get what he wants.</i>
</p><p>The intersections of knowledge, power, honor, and sex collide as Petyr and Sansa await a verdict in the trial of Cersei Lannister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's my own design

**Author's Note:**

> I'm predictable.
> 
> Part three of my ongoing modern politics/business AU. There is... a _lot_ of other stuff going on in my head while all this is happening, mind you, and I fully intend to expand on it at some point. I just have a lot of Petyr Baelish feelings to get out first, apparently.

Everyone’s got a list.

He finds her in bed one night, a yellow legal pad in front of her. He recognizes his own handwriting even from across the room.

He looks askance at her. She doesn’t even bother to feign contrition.

 

*

She’s got her own office now. A year to the day since she took the bar. It’s his gift to her. He can tell she feels shut up here in the city still, but it’s the safest place for her, and she doesn’t disagree. She takes off to Winterfell during summer weekends, but her apartment on the west side remains her home for tax purposes, and his building on the east side is, more often than not, where she sleeps.

Her new office is nowhere near his. He does this on purpose, makes these arrangements specifically for his own benefit – not only because the legal department has no reason to overlap with the CEO’s office, but because when he catches a glimpse of auburn through a glass office window, it still catches him off-guard, even now. They’re set well apart from each other, on opposite ends of the floor that makes up the Vale Capital headquarters.

It’s midday, and Petyr’s scrolling through the New York Times homepage between calls. He’s not a man for prayer. Never has been. But if he were, he’d say a silent prayer for a guilty verdict in the Lannister case. He’d known about Cersei’s penchant for misappropriating Casterly Securities funds for ages – had even done a bit of light bookkeeping for the family when he was in Tywin’s back pocket years ago – but said nothing until the federal prosecutors and the SEC showed up. _Of course he’d testify against Cersei Lannister. But it comes with a price_. Immunity in the larger case, the one being built against everyone who advised Tyrion Lannister prior to his own improbable escape from that max-sec prison just outside of D.C. 

They needed his testimony desperately. They had no choice but to comply. And Cersei looked like a hell of a queen at her trial, all done up in white instead of her usual power crimson and golds, the picture of innocence. He remembered how he’d taunted her, openly flaunted his knowledge of her affairs, whispered “Knowledge is power, ma’am,” as she stared daggers into him and leaned away from her brother’s touch. He recalled the night he woke up with a gun to his head and a stranger in his ear, whispering words he’d recall often: “Power is power.”

They needed his testimony desperately, and power is power, after all.

He refreshes the homepage. Still nothing. The verdict was supposed to be coming down today, at least as far as he’s been told, and his sources remain reliable. With a slow hiss of an exhale, he minimizes the window to glance at his calendar when there’s a knock at the door. Two knocks, in fact, and then a third, just a beat later. 

“Yes?” He doesn’t need to give his blessing, not really, but their relationship in the office is nothing if not some sort of satirical play on the conventional. The door swings open a bit, and Sansa’s head protrudes, hair loose and wavy the way he’s always liked it.

“Do you have a moment, Mr. Baelish?” She only calls him by his proper name at the office, and it’s always a turn-on in the worst way. It harkens back to their earliest days, when she seemed almost hesitant, her blouses buttoned one too high. Back when he thought he might have to seduce her properly. “I just got off a call with Olenna Redwyne-Tyrell’s legal team. I have a few notes to run by you before I take any action.”

“Of course. Come in, close the door.” As it swings shut behind him, he leans back in his black leather desk chair, reclining, almost an invitation but not quite. “Is this regarding the Tyrell family’s recent – ah – legal issues? From what I’ve heard, Olenna seems keen on publicly divorcing the foundation from Loras and Margaery’s scandals.”

“I can’t blame her,” Sansa says archly as she straightens her sleek skirt and takes a seat in one of the two chairs opposite his desk. “Those two would do well to stay away from anyone with the last name Baratheon. I can’t say I’m shocked, but I am saddened. I always liked those two. Margaery was particularly sweet to me when she had no reason to be. I never would have taken her for someone who’d get involved with witness tampering.”

“She’ll land on her feet,” Petyr remarks. “Tyrells always manage to come out smelling like roses. Poor Loras, though. He’s been through so much.” They’d all been taken aback when the late President’s brother Stannis had taken up with some cult leader, who managed to convince him to arrange Renly’s murder – the youngest Baratheon brother, the incumbent mayor of New York, had always been the best-liked, garnered the most public love despite living inside a glass closet. There had been no love lost between Renly and Petyr, for certain, but even so, his death came as a tragic shock. And poor Olenna, to have two grandchildren embroiled in back-to-back scandals – he felt for her, at least, because the media hit paydirt when it first came out that at the time of his murder, Mayor Baratheon had been engaging in a torrid affair with _Loras Tyrell_ , of all people, of course it had to be the city's most notorious model-philanthropist-tennis star and playboy heir to one of the most massive fortunes in the western hemisphere.

“Yeah, I always thought Loras was pretty dreamy,” Sansa smirks. “You know, he asked me on a date once, when I was a senior in high school? I got so excited, dressed up and everything, and you’ll never guess what the date ended up being. He took me to a flower show at the National Cathedral.”

Petyr chuckles. “I’m sure you didn’t come here just to make me jealous, regaling me with stories of love lost via incompatible orientations,” he says. “What does Olenna’s team have to say?”

“Actually, that’s not why I’m here,” Sansa says. “Have you heard anything yet? About – you know, the trial?”

“Not yet,” Petyr says. “We should hear any minute now, though. The jury’s taking an unusually long time to deliver on this.”

Sansa frowns, twisting her fingers together in her lap. For the first time in months, she actually looks younger than her years, small in her chair with her legs crossed primly at the ankle. “I know that’s not necessarily a bad omen, but my mind is racing,” she admits. “God. I know you made some sort of bargain, but I just hope you did enough.”

“I did everything I could,” he says. He’s not offended by her candor, but her directness still surprises him a bit. “I assure you, Sansa. I made every possible effort to deliver the most damning testimony possible. I believe I owed it to you. A gift of justice, so to speak.”

“You talk about justice like it’s just another form of foreplay.”

He quirks an eyebrow at this. “I don’t see it that way.”

“No?” Sansa stands, leans over his desk, her elbows creasing documents he’ll have to recopy later. Her blouse is charcoal grey, but her posture reveals a black lace bra, the one he likes. He shifts in his chair, legs spread wider. The door, he is acutely aware, is not locked. “That’s too bad.”

“Mm.” He’s trying his best to remain unmoved, his face impassive, but he’s aware that his efforts are failing. He licks his lips. “I suppose, then, that it depends on your definition of foreplay.”

“I had Ros hold your calls for the next half hour,” Sansa says sweetly, as she leans further across his desk to press a chaste kiss to his lips. He leans into it, sliding his hand along her jaw and opening her up easily, hot and sweet. He remembers when she used to comment on how he tasted, giggling into his lips, “You taste like mint and liquor,” and smirks into the kiss as he notices the distinct scent of peppermint Altoids on her lips. She’s a masterpiece now, made in his image.

_In that case._

He stands, strides toward the door to lock it. Like a flash, Sansa’s around the other side of his desk, sitting in his chair, and normally he’d have something to say about this brazen act, but it’s just too tempting. He’ll let it slide. And slide he does, down onto the floor between her legs, letting her hook one of her long legs over his shoulder, stiletto heel sliding down his back with a lowly audible scrape.

He starts to push her skirt up and then she grabs his wrists, viselike, pale pink nails digging into his skin even as she starts to writhe up from his hands. “Wait,” she hisses, and he furrows his brow. “You’re going to wrinkle my skirt.”

Petyr smirks at this. “I believe that particular consequence may very well be unavoidable,” he says, but Sansa shakes her head. Auburn strands are falling into her face from where they’ve been pinned back on the sides, and her lips make a perfect heart shape as she cocks a brow of her own and whispers, “Take it off.”

Petyr grins, slowly, his lips drawing back across bared teeth. “Of course,” he murmurs. Her skirt zips in the back and he slides his hands underneath her to find the zipper, watches her squirm as she tries to play it cool. He takes his time sliding it down her legs, folds it carefully and lays it across his desk. Her hands have drifted up to the buttons on her blouse, but she doesn’t undo all of them, only the top three. The hint of lace is almost better for him, anyway.

They have – oh, twenty minutes, more or less, accounting for the time wasted on conversation, and Petyr intends to make use of it. He doesn’t waste time teasing, but instead slides her underwear to the side and applies himself in the way he knows gets her off every time: suction on her clit combined with a hard, flicking tongue, two fingers inside the wet heat of her cunt, licking and sucking and twisting inside her. Her fingers dig a little too deeply into his scalp, and he groans against her. Her thighs are close around either side of his head, clenching too tightly, caging him there. He doesn’t care. He gives her this gift, allowing her to control their encounters in her own way, while his other hand snakes down to his own zipper, where his cock is pressing uncomfortably tight against his trousers, unbuttoning and unzipping so that he can stroke himself as he devours her.

Sex isn’t power, and he knows this to be true in more ways than one. Fucking a woman doesn’t make her yours – he’d learned that the hard way – and the ones who overestimate the worth of their sexuality often have the furthest to fall. Sex is only as much of a weapon as the person who wields it. Sex isn’t power, it’s only a series of motions, heat on heat, flesh on flesh, just as knowledge is only information, words and numbers and secrets and truths. 

Only power is power. He supposes that even a broken clock is right twice a day, and if anyone understands the truth inherent in power, it seems right that person would be a Lannister.

When Sansa comes, he holds fast against her, lets her ride out the wave as she writhes against his face. Moments later, he’s got her bent over his desk, gripping those precious documents for balance as he threads a hand through that Tully red. 

Only power is power. Ned Stark had his honor, and it got him about as far as it got his brother: a body bag and a headstone upstate. Lysa and Cat both tried their hardest to live up to the words on the Tully seal; _Family, duty, and honor_ ended in ruin for both. Petyr Baelish is perhaps a man with very little honor, but honor isn’t power either. Rather, it’s the opposite, he’s come to realize.

She’s gasping through clenched teeth as he thrusts into her, and he slows to what he knows must be a maddening halt. “Please,” she rasps, her voice edged with just enough desperation to compel Petyr to tighten his grip in her hair and push into her again.

“There was no Tyrell call at all, was there?” he asks, struggling to keep his voice even as he mounts a steady pace. Sansa groans as the fingers of his left hand dig into the flesh of her hip. “Was it all an elaborate excuse to fuck me in my office?”

“The call – _oh god, please, right there_ – really happened,” Sansa says, her voice betraying an equal struggle. “I promise, Petyr.” She swallows a yelp as he yanks harder at her hair, and he can feel her tightening around him while she chants out a litany of filth and praise, _oh God oh God yes daddy yes please_. 

It wouldn’t matter to him, even if the call really were a ruse. 

If that makes him greedy, so be it. He’s never going to be honorable. He may as well get what he wants.

*

The verdict comes down later that afternoon. Guilty on two of the four charges.

He finds her at their usual place in the early evening, lips lightly stained with wine and slumped slightly over a thick dossier. Petyr ghosts a hand over her back and she sits up straighter at the touch.

“I really hoped for more,” she says through obvious disappointment.

“Two out of four isn’t _terrible_ ,” says Petyr. “There are worse scenarios. I’d hold off on whatever you’re feeling until the sentencing hearing, anyway.”

Sansa’s lips twist in an appropriation of a smile and she closes her binder, slides it back into her bag and throws the strap over her shoulder. “We’ll see, I guess,” she says, and stands. In these heels, she’s taller than him, but somehow he never feels dwarfed.

Petyr sighs, running his hand down her shirt to the small of her back. He rests it there, savors the warmth of her skin beneath the thin layer of her grey shirt. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I did everything I could.”

“I _know_ you did,” she says, and she stresses the second word there. She’ll carry on, because she always does, and he knows he can trust her. She’s an honorable woman.

He holds the door open for her as they leave. He notices, as she goes, that her skirt wrinkled anyway.


End file.
